# Recommender AI Agent: Integrating Large Language Models for Interactive Recommendations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16505 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16505/

## Key facts

- Cited by 131 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agentic recommender systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 47 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agentic recommender systems](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agentic-recommender-systems/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16789/) (2023)
- [WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09332/) (2021)
- [LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08239/) (2022)
- [What Makes Good In-Context Examples for GPT-3?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06804/) (2021)
- [HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17580/) (2023)
- [Self-Attentive Sequential Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.09781/) (2018)
- [Neural Collaborative Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.05031/) (2017)
- [Program of Thoughts Prompting: Disentangling Computation from Reasoning for Numerical Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12588/) (2022)
- [Graph of Thoughts: Solving Elaborate Problems with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09687/) (2023)
- [DeepFM: A Factorization-Machine based Neural Network for CTR Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04247/) (2017)
- [Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04671/) (2023)
- [PAL: Program-aided Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10435/) (2022)
- [Learning To Retrieve Prompts for In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08633/) (2021)
- [Plan-and-Solve Prompting: Improving Zero-Shot Chain-of-Thought Reasoning by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04091/) (2023)
- [MM-REACT: Prompting ChatGPT for Multimodal Reasoning and Action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11381/) (2023)
- [xDeepFM: Combining Explicit and Implicit Feature Interactions for Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05170/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 131)

- [A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13501/) (2024)
- [Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02716/) (2024)
- [AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10468/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13334/) (2025)
- [Hello Again! LLM-powered Personalized Agent for Long-term Dialogue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05925/) (2024)
- [AgentCF: Collaborative Learning with Autonomous Language Agents for Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09233/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Interpretability in the Era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01761/) (2024)
- [The Task Shield: Enforcing Task Alignment to Defend Against Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16682/) (2024)
- [On Generative Agents in Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10108/) (2023)
- [AgentGen: Enhancing Planning Abilities for Large Language Model based Agent via Environment and Task Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00764/) (2024)
- [From Individual to Society: A Survey on Social Simulation Driven by Large Language Model-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03563/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models for Generative Recommendation: A Survey and Visionary Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01157/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Empowered Personalized Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17236/) (2024)
- [MACRec: a Multi-Agent Collaboration Framework for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15235/) (2024)
- [A Survey on LLM-powered Agents for Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10050/) (2025)
- [Explaining Length Bias in LLM-Based Preference Evaluations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01085/) (2024)
- [A Survey on the Optimization of Large Language Model-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12434/) (2025)
- [On the Multi-turn Instruction Following for Conversational Web Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15057/) (2024)
- [How Can Large Language Models Understand Spatial-Temporal Data?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14192/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Large Language Model Empowered Agents for Recommendation and Search: Towards Next-Generation Information Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05659/) (2025)
- [SimUSER: Simulating User Behavior with Large Language Models for Recommender System Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12722/) (2025)
- [Agent4Edu: Generating Learner Response Data by Generative Agents for Intelligent Education Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10332/) (2025)
- [From Language to Action: A Review of Large Language Models as Autonomous Agents and Tool Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17281/) (2025)
- [How Reliable is Your Simulator? Analysis on the Limitations of Current LLM-based User Simulators for Conversational Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16416/) (2024)
- [Towards Next-Generation LLM-based Recommender Systems: A Survey and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19744/) (2024)
- [Towards Agentic Recommender Systems in the Era of Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16734/) (2025)
- [Simulating Financial Market via Large Language Model based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19966/) (2024)
- [AgentCF++: Memory-enhanced LLM-based Agents for Popularity-aware Cross-domain Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13843/) (2025)
- [iAgent: LLM Agent as a Shield between User and Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14662/) (2025)
- [AgentRecBench: Benchmarking LLM Agent-based Personalized Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19623/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recommender models excel at providing domain-specific item recommendations by leveraging extensive user behavior data. Despite their ability to act as lightweight domain experts, they struggle to perform versatile tasks such as providing explanations and engaging in conversations. On the other hand, large language models (LLMs) represent a significant step towards artificial general intelligence, showcasing remarkable capabilities in instruction comprehension, commonsense reasoning, and human interaction. However, LLMs lack the knowledge of domain-specific item catalogs and behavioral patterns, particularly in areas that diverge from general world knowledge, such as online e-commerce. Finetuning LLMs for each domain is neither economic nor efficient. In this paper, we bridge the gap between recommender models and LLMs, combining their respective strengths to create a versatile and interactive recommender system. We introduce an efficient framework called InteRecAgent, which employs LLMs as the brain and recommender models as tools. We first outline a minimal set of essential tools required to transform LLMs into InteRecAgent. We then propose an efficient workflow within InteRecAgent for task execution, incorporating key components such as memory components, dynamic demonstration-augmented task planning, and reflection. InteRecAgent enables traditional recommender systems, such as those ID-based matrix factorization models, to become interactive systems with a natural language interface through the integration of LLMs. Experimental results on several public datasets show that InteRecAgent achieves satisfying performance as a conversational recommender system, outperforming general-purpose LLMs. The source code of InteRecAgent is released at https://aka.ms/recagent.